Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday September 21, 2012 @04:51PM
from the science-will-rise-up-against-you dept.

scibri writes "Think the imprisonment of Pussy Riot is a miscarriage of justice? Check out the story of their cellmate: Chemist Olga Nikolaevna Zelenina heads a laboratory at the Penza Agricultural Institute. She is an expert in the biology of hemp and poppy, and is a sought-after expert in legal cases involving narcotics produced from these plants. Last year, she was asked by defense lawyers to give her opinion in a case involving imported poppy seeds. The prosecutors didn't like her evidence though, and now she's in prison accused of complicity in organized drug trafficking."

You and many other posters here are amazingly naive. With all its shortcomings, the US justice system is perfect compared to the Russian one. The members of the "Pussy Riot" group have just been sentenced to 3 years in prison for chanting an anti-Putin slogan in the main cathedral in Moscow. Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been convicted twice for completely ridiculous charges, and has been in prison for 9 years. Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for a British firm operating in Moscow, uncovered massive tax fraud by Russian officials. He was the arrested for... wait for it... tax fraud, held without trial for almost a year, and conveniently died just days before the 1-year limit for which he could be held without trial was due to expire. It is highly unlikely that he has died from natural causes.
These are just the recent high-profile cases that are known internationally. Beyond those there is incredible corruption at all levels, and complete disregard of the rule of law by the police and other officials.

Naive? You act like you live in a country that hasn't jailed a potential presidential nominee [youtube.com] under Bush's watch on extremely dubious grounds. Watch that video to get a feel for how many other prosecutions have been politically persued and you'll start understanding how corrupted your judiciary was under Bush and continues to be under Obama. Karl Rove, the guy primarily responsible for this politicisation is working for the president of Sweden which is JUST ONE of the many reasons so many are dubious [huffingtonpost.com] about the prosecution of Assange.

People laughed at Bush. In my country (Australia) people laughed at Joh Bjelke-Petersen [wikipedia.org] until he went from state to federal politics. Luckily he was outmaneuvered in a snap election, then prosecuted... and it was exposed how utterly corrupted the judiciary and virtually every department of government had been. His only mistake had been to stay in state politics long enough for the rest of the country to know how corrupt he was. People had laughted, but we in Australia could have conceivably become a dictatorship. That sounds extreme, but the state police were regularly used to monitor, beat and arrest political opposition, political boundaries were redrawn to bais elections etc... This was in AUSTRALIA... and yet people in other states laughed at the bumbling buffoon and felt smug and superior until their democracy was threatened. That was 30 years ago and has been more or less forgotten.

Who did? Pussy Riot? The most they could have been charged with by anyone with a brain is disturbing the peace, which according to the Russian law is punishable by a 15-day detention. Instead they were charged with a religion-based hate crime, and given a very real 2-year prison sentence (my mistake, they got 2 years, the prosecutors were asking for 3).
If you read the reports from their trial or from the trial of Khodorkovsky, you will be amazed at how ridiculous the chargers and the arguments of the prosecution are. Kafka could not have made it up.
And Magnitsky's case in an a class by itself. I person was held without trial and killed in prison. The US congress is considering sanctions against Russian officials because of this case.
There are countless examples of abuse of power by police and other officials happening in Russia every day. There have been cases when people have been run over by a government official or an official's family member, and it was the victims who were charged and prosecuted.
If you care enough, read something besides/.

The problem is that there were a number of case of extraordinary rendition where innocent people were kidnapped by the U.S. Government, taken to the middle east where they were tortured then eventually dumped someplace else or in some cases died of the torture process. One of the more popular cases was that of Maher Arar [wikipedia.org], a Canadian telecommunications engineer with dual citizenship in Canada and Syria whose only mistake was landing in the U.S. for a flight layover on his way back home. What followed would have made a great situation comedy if torture hadn't been involved. The U.S. is stonewalling these cases to this day. There are so many horror stories the case of Aafia Siddiqui [rense.com] is so terrible, it made me nauseous reading it. I think the person the GP may be speaking of was the subject of a 60 Minutes segment. He was a University Professor (and was himself an immigrant from the Middle East) at a major school in New England and had posted flyer to get students together to discuss what the Government was doing and whether it served our culture to abandon the Geneva Convention. The result is that he himself was kidnapped and in an act of extraordinary rendition spent the next 18 months as a guest of the U.S. Government seeing a number of fascinating torture facilities in the middle east. His abuse was severe and the damage to his body and his mind permanent. Eventually he was dumped naked and found his way to Canada where he and his family now live. The US claims no knowledge of what happened to him.

There's a great book about rendition by a former CIA agent, and what he says basically is that the people who pushed this insanity through knew nothing about interrogation or intelligence, and that their choice to ignore the Geneva Convention damaged us far more than any attack from the outside ever could.

Wow, sort of like the private equity firms that support Romney getting investigated and subpoena'd while MF Global and John Corzine (an Obama supporter) go free. As the government behemoth grows, so does the need to appease the beast lest you suffer the wraith of those in power. Sad.

I was about to reply to this story when I read your response. I tend to agree that the New Russia is becoming like the New Amerika. Can we bring back the guillotine and have a simultaneous American-Russian Revolution in which the people of both countries rise up against their own Ruling Class or Bourgoise. Nothing like blood in the streets to keep the bureaucrats in check.

While that *is* what the word means, and is applied correctly, remember that pre-revolution france was a fuedal society. The number of non-aristocrats that owned their own lands and homes was minimal.

It's the same thing as with the 1% of today. A tiny fraction of the population owned the vast majority of land, wealth, resources, and power.

The revolution started with the aristocrats, the "clearly" 1%-ers. This was not sufficient, as the bourgioes readily replaced them in tyrrany.

The problem resolved when the aristocrats, *and* the supporting class (privilaged private land owners) were eliminated. After that, the peasant class could be represented in government.

Eg, what I am getting at here, is that caiming "no, they were the middle class, not the 1%!" Is a nonsequitor, when the aristocrats represented.01%, and the bourgeois represented.99%, while the serf class represented 99%. The false comparison to today's "middle class" being a significantly larger portion of the population does not negate the assertion that the historic bourgeois were the 1%ers.

Of course they did, just not with money but service, much the same as the peasants.The peasant worked a day a week in the lords fields, the lord served time in his lords army.The only ones who didn't pay taxes were the top of the feudal hierarchy, Kings and autonomous Dukes and such. The Church and the international corporations (OK, they weren't actually incorporated) such as the Knights Templar.

That didn't actually work out for the French, and the peasantry got so sick of revolutionaries they stopped following them (the revolutionaries weren't all that great, really). They finally got democracy, but that more or less cemented the elites into power. You think Hollande is a socialist who will re-distribute his wealth to the impoverished unemployed? No, he will definitely keep his own wealth.

No it didn't. They basically killed off everyone that had the connections to establish a cogent civil order, because civil order cannot meet the demands of mob rule, which is what the revolution became.

It indeed did end when the peasant classes refused to listen to the revolutionaries, as they woke up to the festering hell they had created, and the endless witch-hunts the revolutionaries were inciting in trying to hypocritically enforce their own wills over others, and branding any resistance "tyrany". In the end it wasn't at all about equal treatment in the courts, equal opportunities to own land, etc.. it was about vying groups of revolutionaries denouncing each other, and killing each others' supporters until the population basically just ignored them, and went about living.

In many respects, napolean's conquest actually helped bring order to this torn up france, and fostered reconstruction. The vacuums in local politics enabled the grassroots democracy that slowly sprang up however.

I agree though. The revolutionaries had gold on the brain. Not philosophy, nor intents on equality.

Actually the problems started because the price of bread rose to a point most people were unable to buy food to survive. This was due to a worse than usual crop compounded by wheat price manipulation by middlemen refusing to releases stocks in order for the price of the produce to rise further. The government refused to do anything about it and the masses revolted.

Not at all. I doubt most of the people killed were 1% of anything. IMHO, the primary purposes of mass executions like this is as a display of power and removal of rivals, real or potential. Targeting particular economic or social classes, while it occurred on occasion, was secondary.

I doubt it's a coincidence the French haven't won a war since the French Revolution (if you consider Napolean a continuation of the Revolution...)

These battles might be of interest to you arrogant Americans:

1758 Battle of Carillon (a.k.a. Battle of Ticonderoga)
General Montcalm and his vastly outnumbered French forces are victorious over the British.

1781 Battle of Yorktown
French forces, allied with the Americans, are victorious over Cornwallis and his English army.

1781 Battle of the Chesapeake - September 5th
France, coming the aid of America's George Washington, defeats the British in a strategic victory.

You were going for a "funny" upmod, weren't you!

All those battles were before the French Revolution [wikipedia.org], which was 1789-1799. They are hardly contradictions of his somewhat tongue-in-cheek assertion. Moreover, they were battles, while his assertion was for wars. FWIW, I'm not an American, either.

It wasn't supposed to be a contradiction, it was supposed to be educational. Of course I'm aware those battles were fought before the French revolution. That's not the point. The point is that the military the Americans are so fond of mocking is the one that helped them create their very nation.

Mention Ticonderoga, Yorktown, or Chesapeake to any American military buff and they'll get something proud and patriotic in their eyes - but it was really the French that carried those victories. That's something the

If you think 600 is a reasonable estimate of the number that would need to be executed, you are sadly mistaken.

Try closer to 100 million.

It isn't just the 1%ers. It is also the people who would replce them outright, *AND* the people that actively and willingly support them. Eg, the people that vote for democrats because of wellfare and medicare, and the people who vote for republicans because jesus says to, and because republicans give them tax breaks.

Meh, you may be right. "The Troubles" (proper noun) is relating to the Irish, and I admit that this was a misappropriation. However, nearly every text relating to the french revolution refer to the situation as "the troubles of France". (Object of preposition)

Its an easy mistake to make. It doesn't detract from the gruesome state of affairs prsent during that period.

I am sorry if it confused you, but I was in no way supporting "french revolutionary" tactics. The only thing they do is unravel a social order, and kill relentlessly. The point I was trying to make was that enacting such a policy in the USA would result in even *more* bloodhsed than the french revolution had, because more people are complicit in the rule of the 1%. It isn't just the ceo of monsanto. It's your grandma too.

I agree with you though. Anyone supporting THAT kind of revolution, given the histori

There has been a long standing belief that them that has the gold makes the rules. In our country justice is supposed to be blind but as we hear more and more those without resources caught in the wheels of justice often get turned into gear lube. While I'm concerned with it, I don't think ultimately that our system of justice is flawed completely however your statement would be on the investigative/prosecutorial side of things, not in terms of the court. In the pussy riot brewhaha, the judge should have thrown the case out, but it would appear that the judge is also serving the guy in office rather than the business of the people. In this case I can't see how a judge would keep this scientist in detention for just an opinion based on documented testing results, that is unless she did it for somebody else. I guess there's just more to this than we're being told, kind of like "Fast and Furious?"

What it really comes down to is this... Money buys anything. Your friends, leaders, family CAN be bought at the right price. That is the nature of money. That is the nature of humans. You can have all of the ideals in the world, but even God needs money to do anything. Ideologies are nice, but there is always an asshole to exploit the system. You can never separate money from power because one guarantees another. Redistributing the wealth only amounts to those that would't have the money get taken by those

It is the law of conservation of happiness: happiness cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred from one person to another. It is not a physical law, but a real Russian law. After all, why do you think Putin is always so cheerful? Shooting tigers, wrestling bears, skydiving, etc.?

You jest, but speculate with me. I thought of the best way to spend a wish, and at first I thought "Everyone would live a long, happy life". But, in terms of progress, this is the worst wish anyone could have. People would die happy starving to death. People would be happy letting pedophiles live out their psychosis. The odds of what makes people happy is so dynamic, that you couldn't have a world of everyone getting along without parish

I would think that maybe this is not related to that particular case or is it? I realize with the whole Pussy Riot thing was blown way out of proportion but I would think that this sends a chill down the backs of every citizen in Russia today if it's true.

I didn't see in the article what the formal charges were, just "charged with complicity" socould she have helped some other organization and also, why didn't the prosecutors corroborate or refute the evidence she presented with another analysis of the poppy materials?

It is related to the case. I'm reading Russian sources, but the English TFA says as much.

Basically, in 2010, the Russian FSKN (a law enforcement organization specifically fighting drugs) initiated criminal proceedings on allegation of drug contraband in poppy seeds. FSKN experts concluded that the shipment does constitute a shipment of drugs. Zelenina, as an expert witness, said that the particular shipment did not have intentionally added narcotic compounds, and that small amounts of those substances were present because it is in fact impossible to eliminate them entirely from poppy seeds. And now she's jailed on charges of being party to a contraband shipment of drugs. Interestingly, I read that a new legal standard adopted in Russia in 2005 specifies that poppy seeds must be completely free of these narcotic traces, which is a technological impossibility and thus poppy is now only imported and not grown.

Fun thing is that there's another section in Russian law that allows people to be charged for making deliberately false expert witness statements - but she was not charged with that. The punishment for false statements is considerably lower than for drug contraband.

This is actually old news (she's been in jail for a month) but is cropping up again because her appeal is being heard.

Okay, that explains a lot. So, I guess we'll have to wait for to see what evidence is presented at the trial but I would think that if this is not thrown out by the court, it would definitely be a set back for progress in Russia. I guess the one take away in all of this is not to trust any government nor its legal system because a prosecutor can ruin your life with little evidence or trumped up charges.

What are you talking about? At the moment NASA is sending their astronauts to ISS on Russian-built Souz spacecraft, while lacking a man-rated craft of their own! The Soviet Union achieved so many firsts that USA panicked: That resulted in the Apollo program that finally secured their lead. Even after Apollo, Russia still achieved a first: First space station.

For all the flaws of Russia, their space program is something remarkable. Even when it went through all the shit and chaos of Perestroika and corruption afterwards, they just kept going. We shall see how long NASA will last with all the cuts coming.

It doesn't have anything to do with the Pussy Riot case, other than the (accidental) fact that she ended up in the same cell with Tolokonnikova. The case she was an expert witness was a completely different one, per TFA:

In September 2011, the defence attorneys of Sergey Shilov, a Russian businessman under investigation by the Russian Federal Drug Control Service (FDCS), asked her to provide an expert opinion on the amount of opiates that could possibly be extracted from 42 metric tonnes of food poppy seeds that Shilov had imported from Spain in 2010.... In her expert report, Zelenina stated that it is technically impossible to fully eliminate such impurities from poppy seeds, as Russian laws require. She also wrote that the seized seeds did not contain any deliberately added narcotic compounds

She did LAB TESTS on i would assume a bunch of semi random samples of a shipment of Poppy Seeds and concluded that THIS SHIPMENT was so low in Drugs that this was not a DRUG shipment but a FOOD shipment. So the response of The Government is to JAIL HER for being "in on it". I would assume she had things like lab reports and such which were submitted as evidence and that Somebody Else has not done the same work and found different results (her "random" samples just "happened" to be Clean).

Because, after all, it's profitable to import 42 metric tonnes of poppy seeds, at a market price of around $190,000 ($4600/tonne [beckleyfoundation.org]), in order to extract 390 grams of morphine (based on the 0.00069% content according to the article). Based only on raw material cost, that's around close to $500/gram.

A quick Google says a 30 mg dose has a street price of $10, so that 390 grams has a street price of ~$130,000. Maybe the additional codeine content would bring it past break-even, if processing/packaging/distributi

Because, after all, it's profitable to import 42 metric tonnes of poppy seeds, at a market price of around $190,000 ($4600/tonne [beckleyfoundation.org]), in order to extract 390 grams of morphine (based on the 0.00069% content according to the article).

The seeds will not be destroyed. You separate the seeds and sell them. Whatever remains you put into processing and additionally get whatever you can.

Of course this process makes no profit if the drug content is so low. IMO, the prosecutor is just throw

What makes you say that? Obviously, the original source did as economical separation as possible, probably using screens before shipment. So, the opiate bearing material is likely "fines," not easily separated.

I used simple prices/costs, ignoring any processing/packaging/distribution, and 100% extraction. If the value of the seeds is to be recovered, that can only increase the processing cost - assuming there is any reasonable method of separation at all. Additionally, 10

If the value of the seeds is to be recovered, that can only increase the processing cost - assuming there is any reasonable method of separation at all.

If there is no reasonable method of separation then there is no point to doing anything, because they cannot cost-effectively chemically process the entire batch of seeds. They must separate the parts which bear the active ingredient if there is to be any point.

I have to think that if importing opiates is the goal, it would be cheaper and more profitable to simply sneak a kg of finished product across the border.

At these concentrations there is probably nothing whatsoever that you could do to get the opiates out in a cost-effective fashion, which was the entire point of the testimony.

If anyone involved with drug prohibition actually thought, there would be no drug prohibition.

That is the most naive thing I've seen all day. They have thought it through very carefully, and they sleep on a gigantic pile of money. Some of them, of course, have just been stupid. The majority are corrupt.

a court room merely provides the veneer of impartiality. the state controls the judges, the state controls everything. whatever verdict the state wants, it gets. actual justice is not the point. power and control is

russia still believes in the strong man mentality. one strong dude has to control all. this is viewed as strength. when of course, this is colossal weakness. many russians understand this. but if they speak out about it, they get jailed, censured, fired or otherwise ostracized. it's sad

as long as there is a large pool of russians that respect and believe in the idea of the big strong man, russia is doomed to mediocrity and, paradoxically, weakness

beat the population, you teach the population power and strength means beating the population. some break the cycle, but enough continue the brutality to keep the brutality going generation after generation

no country is immune from this

in the usa, we have a bunch of ignorant rural southerners who faithfully vote republican, even though they live shorter, unhealthier lives, because of republican policies

how is this possible? well, education is deemphasized: that's evil liberal indoctrination. so

many russians understand this. but if they speak out about it, they get jailed, censured, fired or otherwise ostracized. it's sad

A slight correction. You can speak out about it, just not loud enough. Generally speaking, the higher you distribute the message, the more likely you are to get into trouble. Ranting here on Slashdot, like I do, is not their concern. Publishing it in newspapers is.

It's not just soft, it's also distributed. It's not like Putin is personally running around ordering to jail dissidents. If it's some kind of local newspaper, then it'll be the local government using whatever means are at their disposal to suppress it, without any explicit orders or even vaguely stated suggestions from the center. It's surprisingly efficient, because reaction time is much faster that way, and it limits accountability of higher-ups if things should go wrong.

Seriously. The very language of the charge spells out the kind of justice that is being dished out: we say you are guilty, and the court is a formality. Don't question the ruling party comrade.

If her report showed that the defendant couldn't possibly have been importing poppyseeds for the manufacture of narcotics, due to the almost undetectable levels of the required compounds in the imported samples, then he should have been released, and charges dropped.

Claiming that she is complicit with drug smuggling means they found the defendant in the case she testifed for to be guilty anyway. Otherwise, how could she have been complicit in his "criminal importation operation"?

Seriously-- I thought this kind of shit ended with the cold war, and that Russia was trying its best to become a respectable member of the global community. Seriously... this shit is out of control.

At least in the US, the defence doesn't go to jail for offering a strong defense. The defense is just impotent in the face of corruption.

Granted, that isn't a conslation to brag about. Being the most litigious and absurd country on the planet (with nukes) is about the only thing the US is "Number One!" At, other than explorting clearly stupid and one sided legislation worldwide under threat of invasion.

Really, I don't claim my country is paradise. It clearly isn't. But at least there is the fiction of a fai

The fact that we don't jail people for making bad movies is the reason that there have been riots around the Muslim world the past week. Many of the people in those countries just cannot comprehend that the government can do nothing about the film other then issuing statements.

... all it takes is _one_ over-zealous persecutor. The other prosecutors might think it going too far, or might even be genuinely outraged. But what can they do? Charges are charges, and will grind through the pre-established system. She might [or might not] be able to "beat the rap", but no-where can a targetted individual "beat the ride".

One could say things about Russia's lack of tradition and understanding of basic human rights. But frankly I'm not convinced this matters much -- look at how rapidly the majority of Americans have accepted the appalling violations of the TSA.

One might say western judges have a greater sense of procedural necessities like attorney-client or judicial privilige. But judges have been ground down over the years by the stick of overturned-on-appeal and the carrot of higher appointments. Judges routinely accept any intelligent or independant juror being rejected, and AFAIK none will instruct a jury on their [still legal] nullification power. Even some of the USSC rulings are bizzarely in favor of govt (property seizure).

Judges routinely accept any intelligent or independant juror being rejected, and AFAIK none will instruct a jury on their [still legal] nullification power

Not just that; the judge will use misleading language to attempt to make the jurors believe they do not have any jury nullification powers. They tell the jurors that if the defendant did such and such thing that they must follow the law. This isn't strictly false; the law says they may nullify, because the law includes case law, not just what's in the code. So the judge effectively lies to them and gets away with it, which is apparently part of the job... the job of collecting all power to oneself and keeping it.

One might say western judges have a greater sense of procedural necessities like attorney-client or judicial privilige. But judges have been ground down over the years by the stick of overturned-on-appeal and the carrot of higher appointments. Judges routinely accept any intelligent or independant juror being rejected, and AFAIK none will instruct a jury on their [still legal] nullification power. Even some of the USSC rulings are bizzarely in favor of govt (property seizure).

Yes, and prosecutors can generally get away with murder. There is no check on their power that can stick.

and AFAIK none will instruct a jury on their [still legal] nullification power.

The problem with jury nullification is that it is often used for the wrong reasons. In the States a common use of jury nullification was to prevent the white boy who killed the nigger for looking at or talking to a white women from being convicted of murder.

As much as it clashes with both our "Russia is evil" and our "science is right" mindsets, there are some explanations that could justify this. I'm not saying they're actually what happened (indeed, "Russia is evil" is the simplest and most likely explanation), but someone more fluent in Russian than I can look at the actual documents and see.

First, suppose the expert is not actually an expert, just an accomplice of the traffickers posing as one to try to get out of the charges. Rather obvious conspiracy charges there.

But let's suppose the expert scientist is indeed both an expert and a scientist. But let's also suppose that some stronger evidence showed clear drug charges - for instance, finding actual drugs and video evidence of trafficking. This could mean the expert was simply incompetent, or was bought off. Either of those would be grounds for obstruction of justice, although probably not conspiracy (at least according to my limited knowledge of a different country's laws).

How about gruel-born double-standards?
I've been wondering what all this hysteria about Big Bad Russia is about for some time now. Surely Russia is no Shambhala, but the US is a veritable litigation shit-hole slaughterhouse. We, here in the U.S. of A., imprison more people than any other nation [nytimes.com]. We have a privatized prison-industry and trade virtual crime-futures on the stock-exchange. Closer and closer we are coming to a re-introduction of prison labor, all while a repugnantly large portion of incarcerated citizens live in cages for victimless crimes.

My advice to anyone itching to don the Good-Guy Badge and storm the palace of bacchanalian litigation, is to look no further if you are a US citizen. In no way do I suggest that pointing fingers at corruption is error; but we really do have some house-cleaning of our own to do -- and to recklessly embrace hypocrisy may not be wise.

I'm with you on addicts being sick people and not deserving prison. But it's quite a stretch to call drug dealers "care givers". The dealer's goal isn't to help the addict, it's to extract as much money from them as possible.

No there isn't. You are a fool to even suggest there is. Assine laws enforced with procedure are no different that good/poor laws enforced without procedure. If I make it illegal to breathe but you still have due process when you are convicted you think that's better?

Both scenarios result in tremendous damage to truly innocent people. There isn't a such thing as less terrible when the result is destroying peoples lives. Oh don't worry George, you only lost 30 years of your life for an unjust law, but at least you weren't railroaded over a just law and lost 30 years, because that would just suck so much more.

There is a difference because, in one case, you know about the unjust law, and you can plan your actions to avoid it - or at least avoid getting in caught. In the absence of the rule of law, on the other hand, you can be found guilty on a whim of someone in power just because you crossed their way - even on accident. That's a very big difference.

Attorneys who don't do their best for their clients ought to be disbarred. There are countries in which attorneys volunteer for public defense duty because they consider it part of the honor of their profession.

Why can't these people govern themselves without state thugs snatching people in the night?

We tried in the 90s, but somehow it just ended up being criminal (non-state, private "enterprise") thugs doing the same thing. And there were more of them, so people kinda figured that it's better when you have one in charge officially. At least that takes care of all the others.

Why can't these people govern themselves without state thugs snatching people in the night?

That'd take all the fun out of it. You want your victims pissing their pants while they're still half asleep and verging on a heart attack when you paint them with a laser sight. How else are they going to learn the lesson? Besides, it's safer for everyone involved since it's far less likely that you've armed yourself and are ready for them.